Far From Home

Merry Christmas, Y'all. 

Sometimes, when you're far from home at Christmas, you get melancholy. When that happens, it's a good idea to look back at the awesomeness that the Lord has allowed the last few weeks.

The most wonderful time of the year: The Month of My Birthday.
Since I am Jesus' favorite, he shares his birthday month with me.
Sorry to you if you didn't already know about my being the fave. 

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My beautiful friend, Sandy,  and I got to experience The Nutcracker Ballet with our respective girls for the first time.
Love having girls.

 Evidence of Jesus' favoritism toward me: I had really been wanting to take the girls to see the Nutcracker. We've have had an eventful year, though, and was having a hard time justifying the expense at Christmastime. My homeschool group had a scheduled field trip to see it, but it was too late for me to get a ticket with them (at a major discount!) Anyway, the day before the show, an email was sent out that there were three extra tickets. A woman that I've never met ended up blessing us with her tickets that she couldn't use. So wonderful. Thank you, Jesus.

 

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San Antonio

Spouse had to work for a few days in San Antonio, so the girls and I tagged along.

Two girls who love posing for pics at the Alamo.

This guy looks like a spy. Just sayin'.

You know how some moms get irate when someone outs Santa? You know the moms: something about the kid's fantasy being ruined because a kid in the 4th grade blabbed. I've seen it happen. Mom gets fired up.
Wonder how those moms would feel seeing this Santa sitting on this bench outside the Alamo? I mean, wouldn't they be obligated to protect their child's fantasy by letting their precious little ones sit on that lap?

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Austin

We took the scenic route home from San Antonio and went to Austin. We visited some cool shops and ate cupcakes out of a silver bullet in a parking lot called The Food Truck. I love that place and would gladly do my part to "keep Austin weird".

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Ice Skating!

Homeschool group Christmas Party means making new friends.

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We got Elfed!

Our community group from church left these two rednecks on our doorstep late one evening. They brought some goodies, too! Hilarious. (Pics above and below.)

Then, as part of this Christian hazing ritual,  Buddy the Nutcracker and his hillbilly friend, Bubba the Elf, had to be passed on. We are TERRIBLE elfers. Terrible. Spouse was so loud! Pretty sure we were "caught". It was so fun, though!

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Had friends over.

Meg & her buddy, Seth.

Goodness, I am in love with these kids. 

Wii baseball.

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Christmas Party.

Sandy had a Gingerbread house decorating party. Bunch of mommas and kids. Bliss.

Publicly fought Maddy over this one. I won.

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Got lots of love from home.

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Candlelight Service at BCF.

Jesus, Lord at the birth.

Making Jesus famous.

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Christmas.

Maddy's first apple pie.

No-Bake Cookies for Daddy.

Gingerbread houses.

Spouse was a show-off. He made the least mess and the best construction.
A graham cracker manger with a pretzel stick playing the part of Jesus. He took scissors to a Gummy Sweet Tart and made the star. Ridiculous.

Happy Christmas Eve Fajitas.
After this fab dinner, we went to look at some serious Texas Christmas lights.

<Insert awesome Christmas morning pictures here. 

Wait. 

I can't. 

I accidentally formatted the memory card with the pictures from our very first Texas Christmas.

Brilliant. >

We got to FaceTime with family and open gifts. This invoked simultaneous cheer and sorrow in each of us in some way.

Meg burned her hand on the smoker and got herself a free ticket to the urgent care down the street.
Her pain tolerance has always amazed me. She is such a beast.

The following is a re-enactment of Christmas morning. Although, some missing items were already in the backyard and garage at the time of this re-enactment, the actors in these scenes have done their best to recreate the events as they originally happened.

Don't judge.

Meg reading Luke 2.

Smoochin.

Merry Christmas! 

The man God uses to lead & bless this family.

And, in an effort to completely gross out my kids...

 Sometimes, when you look back at all the awesomeness, you see that there are so many reasons to be grateful.

It's Christmas.
Jesus came.
He was far from home.
He had a purpose.
He did what he came to do.
He had to leave his family. He had to leave people he loved.
Why would it be any different for us?
We came here. We're far from home. There's purpose in it.
We are going to do what we came to do.

Be Jesus here.